In the past, stage design used natural products from the earth such as animal products, stone, wood, and plant fibers. Recent stage designs used paper, plastic, clays, paints, and forged metal for forming foreground and background stage objects. As twentieth century technology dawned, stage designers replaced elaborate candle and gas lighting fixtures with incandescent lamps and later, with high-powered spot lights. Today, leading stage designers are sophisticated in the engineering mechanics of acoustics, computers, electrical systems, film, hydraulics, lighting, motion control, motors, sound amplification, and video.
Numerous individual stage design inventions have resulted from integration and enhancement of other inventions. Thus, modern stage designs have been the work of designers combining different ideas, inventions, and products of their own and others to create a cohesive stage design unique to each individual production.
The costs of staging a show with elaborate background scenery are tremendous irrespective of whether the show is live theater, a musical performance, ballet, the opera, or even a professional ice show. Almost all shows are designed either as one venue productions or are staged in big cities where long runs in large theaters and arenas are assured. This business side of artistic production which has evolved naturally is governed by the laws of economics.
Moreover, today's typical background scenery for a stage is cumbersome and fragile. Current background sceneries are created manually by applying paint to paper, wood, plastic, and steel. These design techniques and the resulting background sceneries are perfectly suitable for single venue stage presentations which, by design, stay at one venue for the length of the intended performance run.
On rare occasions, when background sceneries are designed for more than one venue, the background sceneries are merely made portable. Background sceneries designed for one or even two venues, are not suitable for extended tours as the background sceneries are subjected to great stress and commonly break down during transportation. Therefore, use of such background sceneries for touring performances is not economical over the long haul.
If a show does travel over a long period of time, background sceneries deteriorate and must be continuously re-furbished at great expense. As noted above, background sceneries are particularly expensive to design and fabricate, so that continual refurbishment costs can severely affect the profitability and long-term viability of a theater company.
The above described natural evolution of shows doesn't adequately recognize the people of the smaller cities and metropolitan areas throughout the world who do not have the financial ability to travel to the performance capitals to see artistic performance at its highest level. When top shows direct from the Broadway stage do travel, they rarely go into a metropolitan area of less than several million. Therefore, there is an artistic dearth in the hinterlands.
Another negative result of the current economics and technology of the performance touring industry, is that current background sceneries are designed for theaters with a large "fly area". The fly area of a theater is the open area above and behind the proscenium arch of the stage where background sceneries are stored and then moved (or "flown") down to the stage during performance. Many older theaters, such as Carnegie Hall and newer arenas do not have fly areas. Thus, venues without fly areas are unable to stage shows with elaborate background sceneries, rendering such venues unable to compete for many popular top-grossing shows.
When touring concert performers seek to accentuate their performance, they often achieve it by designing background sceneries to match the theme of their current production. Concert background sceneries are often constructed of painted wood, steel, molded plastic, vertical hydraulic lifts, lighting and control electronics to allow a show to be seen by the ticket buyer sitting at the far upper reaches of a 20,000 seat arena or a 50,000 seat stadium. Admittedly, touring musical concert performers do a better job reaching small cities than do theatrical stage shows. But, because of the cost of moving the sets, large concert tours, (which do reach many differently sized cities), often become more of a promotional effort to help sell the musical recordings of the touring concert performers, rather than a venture designed for profit.
Today's concert and theatrical stage designers have been successful at adapting current lighting and sound technology to achieve a desired background illusion. But, because their focus has been on individual shows, rather than producing complete systems which benefit the industry as a whole in quality and price over time, the industry has suffered. This becomes clearly apparent in times of economic downturn when the consuming public has less disposable income for luxuries such as concerts, plays, and shows. A modern producer of a show is always faced with the task of competing aesthetically with the last "big" show. He/she must deal with rising production value costs while squarely facing the possibility of a half-sold show in a large arena, because of a bad economy. This fact has forced the modern producer to consider the advantages of bringing more high entertainment technology into the live performance to remain competitive.
Within the last five years, it has become apparent that the art of live performance has truly begun blending with the improving technology of video and film production. Audiences at large musical performances now expect to see video projections of the artist displayed on flat screens on and adjacent to the stage. Nowadays, its the rare performer who doesn't produce several music videos to complement their latest music recording release.
As the quality of video projection equipment increases, so does the frequency of its usage by theatrical producers and concert producers. Current video projection equipment can transmit a clear image on an extremely large screen so that a person at the back of the arena or stadium can see clearly the projected image.
Projection screens have all had two-dimensional shapes and sizes over the years. A projection screen is positioned so that film, video, or slide images can be projected from the front or behind so as to accurately portray an intended image. Such projection screens are well-known and have been described, for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,379,741 and 2,294,930 and 3,637,285 and 4,478,902.
In the performance arts today, numerous producers and companies experiment with and profit from film and video projections. But, their efforts still remain rooted in the concept of creating a projection system for an individual show, utilizing commercially available equipment and scaling them as necessary.
To this point, the usage of projection in performance art has been limited to stationary film and video projectors projecting images on flat rectangular screens. For instance, performance artist George Coates of San Francisco has experimented with video projections on flat objects or screens designed for single venue usage for several years. With special effects, the projected images do give a greater sense of depth. However, this technique does not create an aesthetically pleasing three-dimensional image because the audience must wear polarized glasses and the screen lacks varying levels of depth to its surface. Coates has also experimented with two parallel flat diaphanous screens, which fail to provide a three dimensional effect. Coate's productions are designed for one theater only, with no system portability built into its design.
Hence, conventional two dimensional projection screens fail to provide the necessary depth whereas three dimensional projection screens fail to provide the necessary detail due to loss of image clarity (unless polarized glasses are used).
A long-held goal of stage designers has been to create stage backgrounds which portray the reality of life in depth, size, detail and texture. The approach of the current theatrical producer who utilizes video projection is short-sighted and is reminiscent of an old style of thinking of creating costly individual systems for individual shows in large metropolitan area, which limits its benefits to a smaller, more privileged group.